Andrew and Meredith gettin philosophic

As the 1850’s progressed, a new ideology came about to which we are all familiar with: the transcendentalist movement. Spearheaded by great minds such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, this period was the first time that America had spawned a true philosophical movement of its own. Particularly the writings of Thoreau deal with the necessity of nature and how a simpler life can lead to a more fulfilling existence. This Buddhist-like philosophy is best demonstrated by Thoreau’s Walden, a novel where he details of doing what generations of Americans had done before him: be self-sufficient in a log cabin. I found his writings particularly influential when we reflect on the literature we read in class, because in Return of the Native (and from what I understand all of Hardy’s literature) deals with a more simple, pastoral existence.

Transcendentalism was the main philosophical idea in the 1850s, especially by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Because transcendentalism began as a radical religious movement and Emerson believed that there should be a better way to have a conviction of a more personal experience of the divine and believed that this sort of ideal should be available to all people. The Transcendentalists assumed a universe divided into two major parts and Emerson wrote more about the soul aspect, saying that the soul is “all is that is separated from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, NATURE.” Emerson took a lot of his philosophical ideals and turned them into more activist national issues, including the abolition of slavery.